Skilled surgeons can do amazing things, absolutely brilliant things, to save lives, treat injuries and tackle complex conditions. But once you’re out of intensive care, it’s only then that you become aware of the critical need for quality rehabilitation and mental health recovery for the long road back to wellness, happiness, confidence and health – that essential support to be the ‘same you’ as you were before.
But, shockingly, it isn’t always available.
It wasn’t until we, as a family, had to confront our own life-changing situation that we could see and understand the problem. In 2011, my daughter, the actor Emilia Clarke, survived the first of two life-threatening brain haemorrhages while working on the Game of Thrones television series.
To this day, we are so thankful that with the unstinting support of Emilia’s nurse it helped her to make a full recovery.
When we launched our charity, SameYou for brain injury recovery in 2019, and Emilia told her story to the New Yorker, the sheer number of young survivors reaching out to us crashed our website. Their stark messages revealed a huge unmet need for rehabilitation, leading to significant mental health issues.
It inspired us to fight to close that gap for all survivors – including the 10,000 that have contacted us to date. The charity’s goal is to help them get the right treatment, to benefit from immediate neurorehabilitation after leaving hospital, and to do everything possible to be the same person post-injury as they were before.
Informed by Emilia’s experience, SameYou focusses on helping young survivors to get the rehabilitation they need to be the people they want to be – and everyone I’ve ever met and spoken to wants to ‘be the old me’ after the stress of experiencing a brain injury. Everyone needs emotional support – this is a huge part of it. That’s why we’re working to change the narrative on brain injury.
We share common ground with the National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC). I think it’s going to do outstanding work. It has the opportunity to be a flagship and a tangible major piece in the change we all want to see across the whole of rehabilitation. It’s a glimpse of the future and another step on the road for making the best rehabilitation available to all.
Right now, our efforts are on SameYou’s pioneering group rehabilitation programme called Neurorehabilitation Online (NROL). Almost 1,000 patients have benefitted so far from the support programme which gives recoverees access to specific treatment, advice and information to help them regain confidence and fitness. It’s made up of ten important components including physiotherapy, advice on how to live well, support for cognitive communication difficulties, ways to improve speech and a ‘café’ group for support and discussion. It is currently being delivered in London and Lancashire, funded by SameYou, and we hope to roll it out more widely across the UK.
Like the NRC, our goal is to be a force for good. Emilia experienced something that no one planned and no one wanted. But our determination is to take something positive from that and, from that lived experience, to smash the stigma around brain injury in young adults.
As with the NRC, we are stepping up to make things better and to impact lives as positively as we can.
My firm hope is for the NRC to be the place that changes understanding around clinical rehabilitation and shifts the dial on how we deliver treatment to the people who need it after traumatic injury or illness.
Our shock as a family when Emilia had her brain injury was catastrophic. It was also a catalyst for action. Through Emilia’s voice and the outstanding work of our small but dedicated SameYou team, it’s now all about what we can do to help others – and we’re getting on with doing that.
Jenny Clarke MBE is Co-Founder and CEO of SameYou